Introduction

Abstract

In January 2012, I attended the Baltimore, Maryland KPMG Business Person of the Year lecture. The speaker, Rand Griffin, was CEO of Corporate Office Properties Trust, a large real estate development corporation that operates in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area, Alabama, Colorado, and Texas. The topic of his talk was “Surviving the Turmoil—Today’s Morass of Politics, Finance, and Real Estate.” Baltimore, while a large American city—ranked 21st largest in the 2010 US census in terms of population—is not known for international sophistication. On the contrary, it is affectionately known by locals as “Smaltimore.” Within this context, the opening slide of Mr. Griffin’s talk stunned me; it discussed the main drivers impacting the US housing market. Three of his five main drivers were foreign:

• ⊳ The Arab Spring

• ⊳ The Euro zone Financial Crisis

• ⊳ The Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

In addition, he said that the areas to keep an eye on this upcoming year included a potential recession in China and a continuing threat of the Euro zone’s disintegration.